Santorum: I Wouldn’t Use Fetal Tissue, I’m Stronger Than Trump on Immigration

GOP presidential candidate and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum stated, “the other candidates, including Donald Trump, don’t have strong very positions on immigration,” and that he wouldn’t use fetal tissue in research on Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “New Day.”

Santorum said, “I know here in Iowa, the voters here in Iowa actually pay attention to the issues. They want to know what you’re going to do. All the rhetoric can get a lot of attention, and can get some interest early on in a race like this. But in the end, what I found was, people want to know what you’re going to do, and what you — whether you have a track record to be able to make that happen. Immigration is probably a classic example. You know, Trump got a lot of attention on some of his comments on immigration, but now there’s people who are starting to drill down, they’re realizing Rick Santorum has the policy that is the most pro-worker [on] immigration. Someone who has ideas, that’s actually going to do something about lifting wages of all Americans, putting a plan in place that’s actually going to keep us safe, whereas the other candidates, including Donald Trump, don’t have strong very positions on immigration. Now, their — the rhetoric is tough, but if you look at their plans, we’re the only one rated by the immigration groups with an A rating. Almost everybody else is rated with Cs, Ds, and Fs.”

Santorum was also asked if he would use fetal tissue in research. He answered, “No, I wouldn’t, because one of the things that you saw in the Planned Parenthood tapes, was that a lot of women are told, ‘Hey, look, this — if you have an abortion, good things are going come from it, we’re going to be able to use this tissue for a lot of reasons.’ And so it is used in some cases to, I won’t say coerce, but certainly make women feel more comfortable about having [an] abortion. And I think that’s something that I would not want to participate in. I think, all the fetal tissue research that we’ve seen, there was a big push on that about 20 years ago. You really don’t see any — a lot of that work being done anymore, because most of that research has gone to dead ends. But even before that, the morally suspect nature of how those — how that tissue is gathered, to me would say that you simply shouldn’t participate in that kind of research.”

Santorum concluded, “eventually, you get to dig down in what the depths of these positions are, and how firmly held a lot of these positions are by folks, and when you start to see some of these cracks, I think it may show whether the person is really someone who’s going to take on an issue, and be strong on it when they get into a very difficult position of being president of the United States.”

(h/t Mediaite)

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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